How Much I Adored You
by Val-Creative
Summary: Everybody wants to pick the truth. It's just how it is. Because they believe the truth is somehow easier to face than the possibility of someone forcing them to do something undesirable. Except people can do whatever they want to him — but they'll never deserve Keith's truth. /Modern AU. Sheith. Oneshot.


**.**

 **.**

"Truth or dare, Keith," Lance announces, arrogantly peering at him through the smoke-screen. He's casually lounging up on an armchair, arms spread out, his sandal-feet planted to the edge of the plush cushion. Lance's crew-neck top loose on his frame and plastered with a ton of blue-green glitter.

Keith doesn't know _half_ of the people in this dimly lit room.

But they seem to give a shit about what Lance is saying. About this dumbass middle school game.

Everybody wants to pick the truth. It's just how it is. Because they believe the truth is somehow easier to face and share with others than the possibility of someone forcing their influence over them.

Except people can do _whatever_ they want to him — but they'll _never_ deserve Keith's truth.

"Dare."

Keith's raw-red, bitten lips vibrate on their surface. His mouth tastes dry and like the swig of fancy apple-beer from Hunk's bottle. It's a nasty habit. _Biting_. Anxiety is a goddamn bitch.

He purposely tries to not look at the hallway, where the overhead light glows burnished down on Shiro's head, where Keith's heart longs to be standing under with him. Shiro is about four years older than him. They've known each other a long time. He openly, _drunkenly_ kisses another man wrapped in his arms, skewing Adam's glasses, much to the entertainment and hooting of Shiro's equally as drunk friends.

"I _dare_ you," Lance speaks up importantly, posing a finger over his chin in pseudo-musing, "to write the truth on a piece of paper. The _truth_ of what you are afraid of."

Someone tries to protest, insisting this _cheating_ to the rules, and they get promptly cut off by a chorus of boos from all around and Pidge excitedly shushing them, her golden-brown eyes widening. Hunk grimaces from besides Keith, tucking his legs in and moving away on the carpet when Keith frowns.

"… You're a real asshole, you know that?" he grumbles, kneeling up.

Lance's smirk flashes a set of brilliantly white teeth, and Keith wants _out_. He feels the deep-hot flare of his anxiety manifesting, rising in his chest. It's _too_ many people in this room.

Rolo presents out a ripped up notebook paper and a marker from a table-stand.

Keith's fingers quiver slightly, as he reaches for both items. Keith prays no one witnesses it, internally groaning at the murmurs, smoothing the paper against the top of his knee and scribbling. Just _scribble_ anything that pops into your head, he tells himself, pulse racing — just _say_ —

What sounds like a firecracker goes off in the kitchen noisily. A stench like rotten _garbage_ hits Keith's nostrils, when more smoke clouds in through another hallway. Definitely not cigarette smoke or fire smoke. A stink-bomb? The living room clears out, with Keith's tormentors jumping to their feet and yelling, rushing out to the other hallway where Shiro and his friends have already vanished.

The empty apartment balcony is where Keith hides out, gasping and massaging over his breastbone. The skies are grayer and colder than yesterday, blowing freezing cold air against Keith's pasty cheeks and flapping the material of his black-and-grey striped hoodie. Mist creeps down below in the parking lot.

Keith's paper wrinkles between his fingers, one of its corners pressed up to the frowny face, dark-inked tattoo on the inside of Keith's ring finger. ( _Another_ dare last semester courtesy of Lance.)

A cigarette dangles uselessly against two slots in the railing. Keith grinds its rosy-red end in the white, lined gap between **I** and **LOVE** and watches in an eeriely grim satisfaction as his deepest, darkest truth curls into flaming, rosy-red ashes at the toe of Keith's sneakers.

"There you are…" Shiro calls out, waving a hand awkwardly to Keith from the master bedroom's door-frame and swaying on his feet. His grey eyes hazed out from the alcohol. He mumbles into Keith's dark hair, as soon as the younger man joins him and places a hand around Shiro's waist to help him upright, cozily weighing against Keith's side. " _Kee_ … don't leave me like that… … everybody's leaving…"

"I know, Shiro."

 **HIM** smolders, exposed and ashy-dark to the contempt of misty rain.

 **.**

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* * *

 _Voltron isn't mine. I STILL HAVE TO POST MY OTHER SHEITH PROMPT PARTY FIC,,,,, BUT I'M DOING MY THIRD CHOICE PICK RIGHT NOW. Listen,,, it's fast but I did it. I took "Truth or Dare Sheith" and yeah,, UR WELCOME. IT GOT STRANGELY EMOTIONAL. Thanks for reading! Please please leave a nice word if you like this!  
_


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